{"id":10787,"date":"2015-08-06T06:14:31","date_gmt":"2015-08-06T11:14:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=10787"},"modified":"2015-08-06T06:14:31","modified_gmt":"2015-08-06T11:14:31","slug":"a-true-jobs-massacre-spreads-in-us-oil-gas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=10787","title":{"rendered":"A True Jobs Massacre Spreads in US Oil &#038; Gas"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/2015\/08\/05\/the-true-jobs-massacre-in-the-us-oil-gas-sector\/\" target=\"_blank\">A True Jobs Massacre Spreads in US Oil &amp; Gas<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>It\u2019s been tough for US oil companies. And even tougher\u00a0for their investors. The hero\u00a0<em>du jour<\/em>\u00a0is Marathon Oil.<\/p>\n<p>Today afterhours it reported an eye-popping 48% plunge in revenues in the second quarter and a net loss of $386 million. To stem the bleeding, it slashed capital expenditures by 40% from the prior quarter. \u201cImportantly,\u201d as it said in the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/ir.marathonoil.com\/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=926133\" target=\"_blank\"><u>press release<\/u><\/a>, it was able to reduce production costs in North America by over 30% per barrel of oil equivalent from a year ago. And it cut is general and administrative costs by more than 20%.<\/p>\n<p>The key to survival in this environment of plunging revenues is conserving cash and slashing expenses, including \u201cworkforce reductions,\u201d as the company calls them. And something else\u2026.<\/p>\n<p>Marathon proudly said that its global production from continuing operations (excluding Libya) rose 6% from a year ago, with its US production soaring \u201cnearly 30%.\u201d And it\u2019s not backing down either: Total company production would increase 5-7% year-over-year, with a 20% jump in production in the US.<\/p>\n<p>Thus it joined the cacophonous chorus of oil and gas companies that have been bragging about production\u00a0<em>increases<\/em>\u00a0despite the oil glut, despite the oil price plunge, despite the mayhem in the oil markets, just when investors are desperately waiting for the ever elusive production cuts.<\/p>\n<p>BP\u2019s debacle is even worse. Last week, it announced a loss of $6.3 billion and warned of more layoffs to come. It raised the restructuring charges for those layoffs from $1 billion, put forward in December, to $1.5 billion. \u201cWe will continue to identify more opportunities for simplification and efficiency,\u201d is how CEO Bob Dudley put it in perfect corporate-speak. And cuts are now coming at \u201ca faster pace.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Dozens of companies in the oil &amp; gas sector have announced job cuts since last fall, with some of the global players, like Baker Hughes, pushing their layoff numbers into the low five-digits. It has been a relentless litany.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A True Jobs Massacre Spreads in US Oil &amp; Gas It\u2019s been tough for US oil companies. And even tougher\u00a0for their investors. The hero\u00a0du jour\u00a0is Marathon Oil. Today afterhours it reported an eye-popping 48% plunge in revenues in the second quarter and a net loss of $386 million. To stem the bleeding, it slashed capital [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[47,2124,7895,1729,1775,7894,4254,4255],"class_list":["post-10787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","tag-baker-hughes","tag-global-oil-production","tag-marathon-oil","tag-oil-and-gas-industry","tag-oil-price-collapse","tag-us-oil-and-gas-industry","tag-wolf-richter","tag-wolfstreet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10787"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10788,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10787\/revisions\/10788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}